This stamp commemorates an agreement to free up trade and travel restrictions between Australia and New Zealand. Understanding that I have just lost half of this week’s readers, 39 years later it might be fun to examine if ANZCER worked as intended and perhaps even if it should be built upon. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to this week’s offering from The Philatelist.
The picture below shows the charmingly black and white photo of the charmingly grey second string politicians that signed the agreement in 1983. By the time of the signing the terms of the agreement were already in effect and even this stamp was already issued. So for the stamp we get an 80s stylized emblem of a kiwi bird and I think a wombat no doubt hiding out together from the indigenous predators. You might think this a little dated, but the stamp was reissued in 2013 and what really proved dated was the 27 cent denomination.
Todays stamp is issue A325, a 27 cent stamp issued by Australia on February 2nd, 1983. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 50 cents (American) unused. The value of the 2013 reissue catapults to 70 cents unused.
Australia and New Zealand started out as separate, self-governing British colonies. The British Queen is still Head of State of both countries. In 1965, Australia and New Zealand signed their own NAFTA agreement cutting tariffs between the two countries 80%. There were fears in Australia about being flooded with cheap New Zealand dairy products, but the decision was made to take integration further by cutting tariffs to zero and allowing the free movement and right to work of people between the two countries. These provisions of the ANZCER agreement took full effect in 1990. Below are two graphs of each country’s exports to the other since the agreement. The graphs show the trend as up, up, and away but you should remember how much inflation there has been in the last 39 years. This 1983 stamp denomination should remind.
Being seen as a success, modern politicians of both left and right in both counties have spoken in generic terms of expanding the integration. However in 2015 a new group got started with the acronym CANZUK, that proposes a similar to ANZCER relationship that includes the United Kingdom and Canada. They point out that all the countries share the Queen as Head of State, similar Parliamentary and legal systems, similar standards of living and growth rates. There is sort of lead balloon aspect of no home rule empire reconstituted to CANZUK, but the right-wing party in Canada and only them have endorsed it. As an outsider American, I can see the bigger problem. The group lacks a popular emblem that adds an English bulldog and a Newfoundlander dog to the kiwi bird and the wombat hiding out together from the indigenous predators. Guys you have to learn to sell your ideas!
Well my drink is empty. Come again next Monday for a new story that can be learned from stamp collecting.